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Understanding the Antisemitism Crisis in the British Labour Party

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Understanding the Antisemitism Crisis in the British Labour Party Understanding the Antisemitism Crisis in the British Labour Party Mark Pickles, Church of England 4th March 2019 This journalistic essay builds on the 10,000-word essay I published on 14th February 2019: Antisemitism Today in the Churches, Politics, Sciences, and Universities of England. Here I focus on the British Labour Party, and why we must #BeLouder against the Jews of the so- called “Jewish Voice for Labour” if we are to win the battle against Antisemitism in English society. And battle we must, whether we are Jews or non-Jews, secularists or (such as me) faith allies. As the Labour MP John Mann said last week in a passionate speech, expressing his shame and disgust at what the Labour Party has today become under Jeremy Corbyn, “we must take the war to the antisemites”, and “we must win”. John Mann rightly points out that once a society’s Jews are under threat, everyone and everything is under threat. There is no society, no nation, anywhere in the world, that has functioned morally, politically, intellectually, economically, ecologically, culturally or spiritually where the antisemites have won, and the Jews have fled or been expulsed. (I have put a link to a video of John Mann’s speech at the end of this article.) Antisemitism, as I suggested in my last essay, is a kind of false religion, with false hopes and scapegoats, that makes otherwise intelligent and wise people evil and stupid and addicted to conspiracy theories. Antisemitism curses everything. Within living memory it very nearly destroyed Europe, and today it is destroying the Arab nations and the Palestinians, and is very likely to destroy the British Labour Party, if not Great Britain. Not only must we take on the Jews of Jewish Voice for Labour, including Jewish scholars, but also Christians, including Christian scholars, and secularists, including secularist scholars who, in their desire for a Socialist revolution, hide behind Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) as soon as it is pointed out that the Socialist momentum of our times is profoundly and institutionally antisemitic. Indeed, as we will see, it is largely because there are some English Jews in the British Labour movement who deny that Labour has an antisemitic problem that Labour is institutionally antisemitic. To make matters worse, the Labour Party has assigned members of JVL to give “antisemitism training” to the rest of the Labour Party, which is a no more a sensible thing to do than to leave rats in charge of the cheese larder. Jeremy Corbyn obviously has many supporters in England, but Corbyn is an antisemite. Most people in England today are not openly antisemitic, and would not admit to wanting to put an antisemite in power, and so the small group (including intellectuals) of self-identifying Jews who defend Corbyn’s antisemitism and his Momentum movement are suddenly finding themselves useful and popular. The idea is that if some Socialist self-identifying Jews (such as the BBC’s Michael Rosen, and the filmmaker Michael Leigh) tell us that Corbyn is not antisemitic but is in fact the best leader the Jews of England could have, then surely non-Jews can have a clear conscience that they are not campaigning for the election of an antisemitic Prime Minister. But JVL is not influencing, or fooling, British Jewry at large. The increasing popularity of Jewish Voice for Labour does not come from British Jews, 86% of whom, according to a recent poll (by Survation in August/September of 2018), regard Corbyn as antisemitic (compared to 39% of the general population who believe he is antisemitic). The support for JVL generally comes from non Jews who support Corbyn but desperately need to deny or defend his antisemitism by appealing to the self-identifying Jews who support Corbyn. Below, for example is the screenshot from the Twitter account of a scholar I know quite well, the Roman Catholic scholar Professor Tina Beattie (Professor of Catholic Studies, who is a regular contributor to BBC’s “Thought for the Day”). It was retweeted on 23rd February 2019, just a few days after Luciana Berger MP made the headlines through being hounded out of the Labour Party in what deputy leader Tom Watson and other senior members of the Parliamentary Labour Party admitted was the “antisemitic bullying” from her Constituency Labour Party in Liverpool. Luciana Berger announced that the reason she has left the Labour Party is because it has become “institutionally antisemitic”. Antisemitism. What antisemitism? Just two days after Luciana Berger was hounded out of the Labour Party by antisemites, this JVL scholar wrote an article explaining that the Labour Party does not have an antisemitic problem. Here is it retweeted by the Roman Catholic Professor Tina Beattie. Of course, a retweet is not necessarily an endorsement, but I’m sure it is in this case. I know Professor Beattie well enough through online discussions (since 2016) on theology and politics that she has long campaigned for Corbyn, and as his antisemitism has increasingly become public knowledge, she has been unwilling to accept there is an antisemitic problem. When I have challenged her directly (several times in 2018) about Corbyn’s antisemitism, she has protested (on Facebook) and, in response, she has posted links to articles by JVL scholars or those sympathetic with them, such as Norman Finkelstein in the USA. Professor Beattie is not antisemitic, or at least I have never seen any evidence to suggest that she is. In fact she dialogues inter-faith, which is why we connected in the first place. But like many scholars who support Corbyn and have developed a penchant for Socialism and Karl Marx, Tina seems to have a convenient blind spot for the antisemitism of Corbyn, and is deaf to the voice of England’s Jews, apart from the unrepresentative sliver of English Jews – the Useful Idiots – who make up Jewish Voice for Labour. But JVL has contempt for Judaism, Israel and, indeed, God of Israel and everything Holy, and is more convinced by the alternative religion of the self-hating Jews Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. The author of the article for JVL is a Professor Harvey Goldstein. He opens by complaining about “mainstream political debate”, and “the mainstream media” and “muddled thinking”. He notes that eight members (nine since he wrote the article, and at the time of my writing) have quit the Labour Party, largely on grounds of antisemitism, but says: “Remarkably, or perhaps not so remarkably, there happens to be little sound evidence to back any of these claims [of antisemitism]”. How much more evidence of Labour Party antisemitism – against Luciana Berger MP alone – does Goldstein (and Beattie) need to see? As if then to take the reader’s mind off what has just happened in the Labour Party (including threats and all kinds of sickening verbal antisemitic assault from within the Labour and Momentum membership to Luciana Berger and her unborn child), Goldstein essentially switches subject, telling us: “In Summer 2018 the main attack on Labour centered on its refusal to adopt a definition and explication of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA), sadly the National Executive Committee of the Party gave in and agreed to adopt the IHRA definition, with the apparent support of Corbyn, albeit with the caveat that they would still retain the right to be critical of the Israeli Government.” [There is in fact no caveat needed in the IHRA definition, which accepts the Israeli government is not beyond criticism, in the way that no national government is beyond criticism.] “Sadly”, says Goldstein in February 2019, the Labour Party accepted the IHRA definition of antisemitism in the summer of 2018. Sadly? Last week, the Labour MP Chris Williamson was suspended, pending investigation for antisemitism for essentially saying what Professor Goldstein has said: the Labour Party has given too much ground, and has been “too apologetic” to charges of antisemitism. Antisemitism. What antisemitism? It is not as though the charges of antisemitism are coming just from outside the Labour Party, or just from Jewish MPs in the Labour Party, they are coming from senior members of the Parliamentary Labour Party, up to and including the Deputy Leader Tom Watson MP. JVL now tells us that it “deplores the suspension of Chris Williamson”. The Jews of JVL, it seems, do not consider Williamson to be an antisemite, but the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), which represents the consensus of British Jewry, has other ideas, writing a letter to Williamson on January 23rd 2019: Dear Mr Williamson, I have been contacted by many members of the British Jewish community, and other opponents of antisemitism, who were disgusted to see you so publicly signing the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment in the House of Commons. I share their disgust. I do not disagree with the wording of the tweet that accompanied your self-publicity, “ Hatred and bigotry led to the unimaginable horrors of the holocaust. We must never forget and always strive to build a better, peaceful and compassionate world through love and solidarity ”, but I reject its legitimacy, given the way in which you repeatedly smear the loyalty and motivation of British Jews, and others, who voice sincere concern about the disgraceful levels of antisemitism within today’s Labour Party. You would not treat the fears of any other British minority group with such hostility, either inside or outside the Labour Party. For me, it is summed up by how you recently rushed to defend one of Britain’s most notorious antisemites, Gilad Atzmon, before, for once having to apologise for your impulsive behaviour.
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